Monday, 18 November 2013

Flowers of Indulgence

We Brits have, I'm sorry to say, been deriving a lot of guilty enjoyment from the antics of that rampaging id Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto - the latest Ford news is here, combined with handy links to previous jaw-droppers. I was particularly amused, I must say, by Ford's 'defence' that on the occasion he was filmed hitting the crack cocaine big-time, he was already in a drunken stupor (so that was all right then). Surely the people of the apparently very civilised city of Toronto have done nothing to deserve having a guy like this in charge, though presumably they voted him in at some stage...
But what about us Brits - do we have a figure to compete with Rob Ford? Surely not, I thought - until yesterday's news of Methodist minister Paul Flowers, who until recently was Chairman of the squeaky-clean 'ethical' Co-Op Bank. This pillar of the community has been caught on camera (shortly after appearing before a parliamentary committee looking into a black hole in the Co-Op's finances), shelling out folding money for recreational drugs, and boasting about 'stocking up on Charlie, ket and crystal', his plan being 'to get wasted'. Nice work, if not quite in the Rob Ford league.
What's striking about both these men is their rotund build (suggesting an appetite for food as vigorous as their appetite for other pleasures). 'Let me have men about me that are fat,' said Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Seems he might have been wrong.

4 comments:

Toss up between mayors and deputy first lieutenants of the county. Meet the queen once and hey presto, OD on oblige. Strange, how the old CWS has turned out, from dividend to deep end. In Scotland they call themselves Scotmid, no hint of historical association.

These are trying times for us proud, but shy, Canadians, who haven't been in this kind of global spotlight since our PM's wife ran off to dance pantyless in New York nightclubs and play nooky with the Rolling Stones. Most of us are torn. On the one hand, it's unspeakably humiliating to have such an addled buffoon embarass us on the world stage. On the other, most of us take an exquisite delight in watching the insufferably pompous beautiful people of Toronto squirm in shame. It's Hobbsian choice in many ways, but I'm still going with the latter.

I hope you've seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0H-PJtdet0w. And I hope Bizet and his collaborators are keeping up with all the latest developments.When I searched for this clip on Boing-Boing, the next Rob Ford link was "Rob Ford Articulates Official Mayoral Cunnilingus Policy."

About Me

Nige, who, like Mr Kenneth Horne, prefers to remain anonymous, was also a founder blogger of The Dabbler and a co-blogger on the Bryan Appleyard Thought Experiments blog. He is the sole blogger on this one, and his principal aim is to share various of life's pleasures. These tend to relate to books, art, poems, butterflies, birds, churches, music, walking, weather, drink, etc, with occasional references to the passing scene.